MSU Rocket Roars into Space

A NASA rocket bearing a payload built at Montana State University blasted 175
miles into space shortly before noon Wednesday, Feb. 8, above New Mexico's White
Sands Missile Range.

The 1,000-pound payload, which includes an optical bench equipped with
high-resolution cameras, took pictures of the sun before touching down
underneath a parachute about 80 kilometers down range. The flight ended in 896
seconds, or about 15 minutes.

Last-minute concerns about the rocket's guidance system slowed the launch, which
took five countdowns before the rocket finally lifted off.

"I thought, 'It's not going to happen. It's not going to go'," MSU assistant
physics professor and project leader Charles Kankelborg said after the launch.

"Then it went 'shoosh'," he said.

A special ordnance crew wearing flak jackets had to retrieve the payload because
it landed in a weapons impact testing area. In a few days, the MSU crew will
drive it back to Bozeman on a U-Haul.

Delayed three times since last August, the launch of the 60-foot rocket capped
five years of work, most of it done by MSU students. It was the first NASA
rocket payload ever built in Montana, according to MSU physics department head
Bill Hiscock.

The project is called MOSES, for multi-order solar extreme ultraviolet
spectrograph. It's a name, Kankelborg has joked, that only a scientist could
love.

"The whole thing is sort of a Rube Goldberg-like contraption," he said. "There
were so many pieces to fit together."

MOSES had to rise high enough to escape Earth's atmosphere, which absorbs the
extreme ultraviolet light the payload was built to see.

"This is an experiment that isn't just enhanced by space; it absolutely needs
space to exist," Kankelborg said.

Equipped with sensors similar to those on digital cameras, the payload gathered
high-resolution images of a broad section of the sun.

"It's more stable than a good photographer's tripod," Kankelborg said of the
spacecraft programmed to open a shutter and fire thrusters to position itself
for its brief sojourn in space. "It's quite amazing."

The payload also gathered detailed information on each pixel from the extreme
ultraviolet portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.

"What's new about MOSES is combining images with spectral information,"
Kankelborg said. "Many previous instruments have done one or the other, but not
both simultaneously."

Scientists hope MOSES and other spacecraft will help reveal what's behind the
sun's magnetic and, at times, explosive personality. Solar flares and explosions
from the corona pack enormous amounts of energy. In today's increasingly digital
environment, solar flares and other electromagnetic bursts from the sun can
really mess up satellites, cell phones, power grids and related technologies.

Rich Parker, 35, assumed that as a mechanical engineering student he would
design and build things. But a rocket payload?

"Never," said Parker, who graduated last December. "I never expected to be
involved in a NASA-supported project."

Parker was one of three students who watched yesterday's launch at the missile
range with Kankelborg. The others were graduate student Lewis Fox and MSU
graduate Hans Courrier.

Kankelborg said up to 30 students at a time worked on the project under Fox.
Most were studying engineering, physics or computer science. Some machined
parts. Others designed electrical and cooling systems. A few wrote software.
Others wore white carbon-fiber suits to assemble the payload in a clean room at MSU.

"I was really fortunate to work on something of this caliber," said Michael
Chase, who graduated in 2003 with a mechanical engineering technology degree.
Chase designed and built the housings for the digital sensors.

In 2004, Chase traveled with the payload to England to insert the sensors into
the housings. He returned last year with Kankelborg and Fox to test the optics
in a vacuum chamber that resembles space.

"There were so many things that were so difficult and took so much time,"
Kankelborg said.

Chase said his more than four years on the project helped him land a job after
graduation. The Nampa, Idaho, native is working for the high-tech S2
Corporation in Bozeman.

This story was originally titled "MSU rocket roars into space above New Mexico desert".